Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Valentine and Lord Berkeley

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

Amendment 75ZAB stands in my name and in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. This amendment comes out of a fairly recent discovery about some new roads that have received permissions under development consent orders. If the developer wishes to put a charge or toll on them then, for some reason, it has to be a fixed-toll plaza, with lots of toll booths and the old fashioned things that one sees on motorways in France, on the M6 toll, and the Dartford crossing. It seems rather odd that a developer who seeks planning permission to build a toll road needs to be told as part of getting consent that if he is going to put a toll or a charge on it then it has to be a fixed-toll point. It seems to me that that has very little to do with planning—except for the planning permission of the site—and that the method of tolling should come out of a policy from the Department for Transport. I have had a useful meeting with officials on it.

It makes me recall the debate that we have in your Lordships’ House every now and then when the American embassy refuses to pay the congestion charge because it says it is a tax. One or two other embassies do the same thing. We all get a bit upset about that and the Foreign Office tries to make the embassies pay. It is an argument, but what is a toll, what is a charge and what is a tax? It is basically something you pay for going into a tunnel or across a bridge or up a road.

I have put down the amendment because I strongly believe that the Department for Transport should now have a policy on tolling. I do not mean which roads should be tolled and which ones should not be because that is a separate issue. We have the London congestion charge, we have tolls for the Dartford tunnel and for the Birmingham northern relief road, and we have lorry road-user charging coming in. The lorry road-user charging is going to be time-based rather than distance-based, which is odd. Nobody else in Europe is going time-based but that is probably why we are. Worse still, if these all move forward, you are going to have to have separate equipment in your car or lorry for each area, road, tunnel or bridge that you wish to use because I suspect that more and more of the crossings that now have toll booths will wish to convert to taking money while you are on the move because it is so much easier and cheaper and, of course, it is quicker for the person paying.

Cheapness comes into it. Noble Lords will correct me if I am wrong but the cost of collection of the congestion charge in London is something like 30% of the amount you pay. With some of the modern electronic systems used in other cities and some motorways on the continent, you are getting down to about 5%, which means that the developer keeps more of his money. One hopes that one day the Department for Transport, maybe in its new roads policy which we were told about earlier in the Committee stage, will come up with a policy on tolling. That should include one system for the whole country—one technical system—that you can have in your car. That means a common technology and it would be much better if it was common throughout Europe. Then it would be up to the developers, the Government or whoever to decide what rate should be charged for using whatever facility you need. We want to get away from the idea that if you are getting consent for a particular crossing or something with a development consent order, it has to specify the type of toll booth, which seems to be a rather retrograde step. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Baroness Valentine]

My Lords, Amendment 75ZAB stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I declare that I am chief executive of London First, a business membership organisation.

The demands on our roads are growing. In major urban centres such as London, there are severe physical limits to building more capacity, and congestion is a serious problem. I believe that road charging will be an important part of that solution as we seek to manage our resources more efficiently. A more sophisticated charging scheme will need to deliver reduced and more certain journey times. As the noble Lord mentioned, London is ahead of the pack: it already has a congestion charging zone, which is now widely accepted, including by all political parties.

This amendment would enable Transport for London to develop intelligent, barrier-free charging systems for new or existing roads or river crossings in response to the growing demand for road space. This is more than an academic point. Transport for London is currently consulting on a new tolled river crossing at Silvertown in east London. There is a real dearth of river crossings on the east side of London, in contrast to the west, and a new crossing here would help relieve the Blackwall tunnel and would support new jobs and growth in east London.

[Lord Berkeley]

Can the noble Baroness confirm that this should apply—and the amendment does apply—well outside London? There is a plan for a new road or motorway linking Felixstowe to Birmingham—of course, I would rather it was a railway, but that is irrelevant—and there is talk of it being tolled. There are lots of other plans for tolled motorways in the offing, so am I right in thinking it would be a national system?

[Baroness Valentine]

Yes, indeed, it would be a national system.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Valentine and Lord Berkeley

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Valentine]

I declare an interest as chief executive of London First, a not-for-profit business membership organisation that includes developers, infrastructure providers and others who may have an interest in the practical implications of the Bill.

As a general point of principle, it is unreasonable to transfer the financial sanctions that emanate from European law to a subsidiary body unless that body has been given adequate powers and resources to meet the law and, furthermore, the UK Government have fully discharged their own obligations. Fairly attributing responsibility for who has infringed the law and the extent to which they have done so is not simple, as other noble Lords have already pointed out. Therefore, I support Amendment 117, which would introduce an independent panel to determine such matters. However, the amendment still leaves the final decision about who will pay the fine with the UK Government. I should like to see the powers of the panel taken a step further, with it being given the power to make this decision. The legitimacy to do so would be derived from its independence, which is not something that the UK Government can claim to have.

In London, this has been raised as a matter of particular concern in the context of the air quality and waste water directives by the GLA, local authorities and private organisations that exercise public functions. Who, for example, is to blame for poor air quality at Marble Arch? Is it the GLA, Westminster City Council, taxi firms or the bus companies? These are complex issues that require independent consideration and a panel with the power to determine who should pay the fine.

While on the subject, I am also concerned about the provisions in this part of the Bill that relate to EU fines, which would allow the UK Government to transfer liability to local and public authorities that exercise a public function. This is an issue addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, in Amendment 117A, which I support. The problem is that, for the purpose of the Bill, public authorities include private organisations that are already subject to existing government legislation and the power of independent regulators. Private organisations may also be subject to contractual obligations, including financial penalties, for providing services outsourced by the public sector.

In relation to EU fines, private organisations should not be held accountable for something that it is not wholly, or even largely, in their power to achieve. It is the UK Government who negotiate with the EU. It is their role to ensure that EU directives are transposed effectively into UK law, and that the right policy and regulatory framework is in place to achieve that. I would welcome any reassurances that Ministers can provide on that matter.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support all those who have spoken so far to express concern about this group of amendments. I thought it would be interesting to examine just how many of these directives, infraction proceedings, reasoned opinions, pilots and so on are likely to be in place at any one time. I start with those relating to transport. In a Written Answer on 7 June the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said that 21 transport proceedings under Article 258 are currently unresolved. We do not yet know how many of those will result in a fine. One hopes that very few or none will, but that is the kind of number that we are talking about in transport. Therefore, one could suggest that there would be several hundred across the whole Government. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us how many are at stake across government.

The next thing I am concerned about is who this should apply to. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned private water companies and he is quite right. It would be useful to look at some examples. I have two examples. The first is the Channel Tunnel, which I spent 15 years helping to build years ago. The Commission has a pilot, which is the first stage of these proceedings, against the British and French Governments alleging failure to implement European legislation. The two Governments subcontract, if that is the right word, the regulation of the Channel Tunnel to something called the intergovernmental commission, which is actually part of government, which is meant to regulate the infrastructure manager in order to comply with the legislation. In the first stage of that situation, the Government would have to fine themselves. They would then have to fine the intergovernmental commission. Perhaps the intergovernmental commission would then pass it on to the private sector infrastructure manager. It sounds a little complicated to me and I do not think that it would work legally. The same could be applied to Network Rail, which is in the private sector, if the Government decided to follow the line suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.

The figures are big. Many speakers have talked about the air pollution problem in London. The figure I have heard from the Commission is that the likely size of fine could be £300 million. Whether it was the present mayor—it could not be the previous mayor even though he came from a different party—the present TfL, the Government or whoever else, £300 million is a very big figure. We should bear this in mind when we talk about how this should be resolved.

The other example I have is an interesting one because it applies to most local authorities in this country. It is the first stage in the complaint from the Commission that local authorities are not complying with the green vehicle procurement rules. The directive—2009/33—came into force on 4 December 2010 and it,

“requires the public sector to use its purchasing power to promote clean and energy-efficient vehicles. Every time they purchase a vehicle for public transport services, they must take into account energy consumption”,

and so on. The obligation extends to all purchases of road transport vehicles by public authorities or transport operators. There are many experts in your Lordships’ House who know how many local authorities there are in this country—in England anyway, and Wales if Wales is included in it. However, working out a £300 million or £200 million fine between all those local authorities and then allowing each one to take this arbitration route, which I hope will be implemented unless the clause is lost completely, is just unthinkable.

I shall be interested to hear from the Minister how the Government will deal with that kind of failure to comply with the green vehicle procurement rules which apply to every local authority. How do they propose to apportion the fine even before it gets to arbitration? How much would this arbitration cost each time it was used? We all know who is going to pay for it. It will be the taxpayer in the end or the local authority ratepayer, depending on whose side you are on or who gets legal aid. With this kind of enormous scope for potential failure, before one starts apportioning blame, the whole thing should be scrapped.